Post by Drahkan on Nov 7, 2016 21:47:04 GMT
I thought I understood how power generation vs. power use worked, but yesterday while building out a new railgun drone I came to the determination that I don't actually know what I'm talking about. 
To help explain the question - which I'm not quite sure how to properly ask 
- here's the situation I ran into:
Drone has a 1.01MW reactor. I put 3 railguns on it, first each rated at 330kw (the power slider at the top-right of the module design), with gyro and loader balanced so that the power chart on the left was "maxed" without pushing the total power above the 330kW. Next, go to test...and the guns only seldom fire, if ever, usually giving me a warning of "not enough power." So I keep knocking them down in power until I end up with 200kW + ~10kW loader plus similarly low-power gyro, and suddenly they seem to fire non-stop as expected.
On the other hand, I first made an otherwise-identical drone that had a single 1MW laser instead of the railguns, and it worked from the get-go.
And on the other-other hand (um...the first?), both are using nuclear thermal rockets, which appear to flicker on-off-on-off while the guns are firing, which may be my imagination but which I'm now wondering might be involved in the whole situation. (As to why I'm using them, "it was an idea I was trying out"...which in retrospect probably isn't working too well, so maybe I should just switch back to a combustion rocket anyway.)
In comparison to the drones, I seem to be able to slap as many guns onto a ship as I want, and the only limiting factor seems to be that the total ship's power output limits how many lasers can fire simultaneously...but it doesn't appear to affect the rate of fire (or anything else) to do with railguns and coilguns, for example. In fact, the whole power-breakdown (lower-leftish side of ship design) only ever seems to take into account the power for a single unit of each given module type on the ship - 30MW for a 30MW laser OR a 30MW railgun - but again, I can have 10 30MW railguns all firing alongside the 30MW laser, as if they aren't using any power at all..?
Any and all explanations would be greatly appreciated.
To help explain the question - which I'm not quite sure how to properly ask 
- here's the situation I ran into:Drone has a 1.01MW reactor. I put 3 railguns on it, first each rated at 330kw (the power slider at the top-right of the module design), with gyro and loader balanced so that the power chart on the left was "maxed" without pushing the total power above the 330kW. Next, go to test...and the guns only seldom fire, if ever, usually giving me a warning of "not enough power." So I keep knocking them down in power until I end up with 200kW + ~10kW loader plus similarly low-power gyro, and suddenly they seem to fire non-stop as expected.
On the other hand, I first made an otherwise-identical drone that had a single 1MW laser instead of the railguns, and it worked from the get-go.
And on the other-other hand (um...the first?), both are using nuclear thermal rockets, which appear to flicker on-off-on-off while the guns are firing, which may be my imagination but which I'm now wondering might be involved in the whole situation. (As to why I'm using them, "it was an idea I was trying out"...which in retrospect probably isn't working too well, so maybe I should just switch back to a combustion rocket anyway.)
In comparison to the drones, I seem to be able to slap as many guns onto a ship as I want, and the only limiting factor seems to be that the total ship's power output limits how many lasers can fire simultaneously...but it doesn't appear to affect the rate of fire (or anything else) to do with railguns and coilguns, for example. In fact, the whole power-breakdown (lower-leftish side of ship design) only ever seems to take into account the power for a single unit of each given module type on the ship - 30MW for a 30MW laser OR a 30MW railgun - but again, I can have 10 30MW railguns all firing alongside the 30MW laser, as if they aren't using any power at all..?
Any and all explanations would be greatly appreciated.
